Tuesday, October 18, 2011

The Herbivorous Witch & Other Spooky Verse

A small selection ofshort Halloween poems for October, and the difficulties of dealing with haints and witches in the modern world...

The Herbivorous Witch

The herbivorous witch lived in the woods
Behind our house

When snow fell she appeared with her long green nose
Perched on our gate

Usually we just hid under blankets pretending the police
Would do something if we called

While the witch stared for hours motionless and silent
Toward our windows...

One day though Molly became so mad she threw old vegetables
In her direction

We giggled watching garbage bounce off the droopy hat
As she stood unblinking

But at sunset she finally drifted backward into the woods
As crows fought over the spoils

And that night Molly disappeared as we all slept warmly
In our own beds

Leaky Ghost

There is a leaky ghost on my ceiling
Whose tears drip into a growing collection of buckets
Scattered about my house

Some nights it’s like a choir of misery
As waves churn from room to room while the unhappy spirit
Restlessly paces the dark

Last spring I made the best of it
And created cascading waterfalls of rock and stone
With water lilies and coy

But during the autumn a gang of thirsty monsters
Moved downstairs and drained the pools
To wash down their deserts

A Vampire to Dinner

Its good manners to occasionally invite a vampire to dinner
So say the magazines at the grocery counters.

Our market has a complimentary bulletin of names and numbers
For those who have no contacts of their own.

Throwing a couple of blood-pigs into my cart
I secretly snatched a card off the board when no one was looking.

I had never had a vampire over for dinner
And had to convince my nervous family that everyone did this.

But as x-marks whistled from the blood-pigs eye sockets
I began to grow nervous and called my friend Blanche

She laughed and said she entertained the undead quite often
Though her fingers were crossed as she lied.

About these Halloween poems:

Around the time I was just starting to explore writing again for Halloween themes, from around 2004 to 2007, I created a small collection of poetry (of which one became The Pumpkin Dream) and at least one short story, all of which might just might find their way into a small future volume of collected spooky works. In the meantime, above are three of a handful of poems from that time period.